southwark council budget cuts

[bawdy-nan]

I notice that the budget for next year was approved last night.

On the website its really hard to tell what the cuts actually mean without sifting through the Equality Impact Assessments. (link)

So far what I can make out is that there will be:

Cuts to lollipop folk (at crossings where there are lights)

Discontinuation of mobile library service (the one that goes to schools and the one that takes books to disabled people). Its extremely hard to tell from the data published what the impact on the other libraries on teh borough might be. as far as I can tell there is a "review" taking place which measn they cna't be precise. I have to say this looks like a careful cop out and obfuscation.

James - you must be a bit more on top of this - can you give us a headline assessment of what the impact might be in the first year or point us to a document that sets this out. (I don't just mean libaries etc I was looking at what I was interested in first)

[James Barber]

Hi bawdy,

Indeed, last night was South Councils budget setting council assembly - the most heated assembly I've ever seen.

I had hoped no one would ask as its hard to respond non politically, but I'll try.

The documentation can be found here:

http://moderngov.southwarksites.com/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=132&MId=3454&Ver=4

Supplemental Agenda no.1 P57 onwards lists growth and cuts by the adminstration

Supplemental Agenda no.3 contains the Lib Dem and Tory proposed amendments - which had to be signed of by the finance director as fully costed and workable in case they were approved by council assembly.

The Labour budget sees a huge increase in unallocated reserves and contingency. The unallocated reserves and unallocated contingency are currently ?22.2M + nearly ?70M allocated reservces - the inner London borough average unallocated reserves being ?22.4M.

During the next 3 years Labour Southwark will add ?27.0M to unallocated contingency increasing it to ?49.2M. So that's ?27.0M more cuts to make this possible than necessary.

They've also assumed that the insourcing of council tax collection which was decided two year ago and goes live 1 April 2011 wont have any impact on improving council tax collection. The finance director agreed with our assumption that this would increase income by ?0.8M 12_13 & ?1.6M 13_14. So another ?2.4M of avoidable cuts. Lots more like this in our amendment in Supplemental Agenda no.3.

The Lib Dem proposed budget and Tory budget obviously failed to be passed.

Many of the cuts and dramatic increase in reserves had been proposed by council officers to Lib Dems during the previous 8 years when we led the council. It felt very much as an officer led budget with the execption of ?4.5M pa of Free School Meals for all primary school kids. Labour were very clear it was a manifesto pledge they want to deliver.

Due to these factors the Labour budget was hugely more slashing and cutting than the alternatives proposed by the Lib Dems or Tories.

The Lib Dem proposals would have seen no cuts to: 5-11 play service, no cuts to play centres for 0-5 year olds, preserve funding for older peoples day centre, keep older person assisted shopping service, taxicard scheme fully kept, keep all enviroment grants, keep community recycling scheme, all CGS kept, keep sport development and the successful kids community games, not cut street cleaning, fully preserve SASBU the award winning anti social behavioural unit, fully keep the noise team working 24/7, keep lolly pop people protecting all our kids getting to and from school, keep current events programme (especially important going into the Olympic year), maintain South London Gallery support, keep all libraries, mobile library, housebound library service, keep all night time and current street cleaning.

Its was a very strange cutting of off ones nose to spite ones face.

[Ridgley]

Cuts and poverty are linked; don?t be surprised if crime will increase because of this and discord in communities.

[Marmora Man]

Ridgley - illogical.

Cuts to lollipop ladies and mobile libraries (tho' personally I'd cut fixed libraries and keep the mobiles) don't affect people's incomes. Equally, poverty, of itself, does not breed criminals - to say it does is to tarnish the majority of law abiding but poor in this country and city. It is condescending in the extreme.

[bawdy-nan]

Thanks so much for this james. I can see how it's tricky for you to respond straightforwardly (I mean - I can see its deeply political) but your post is really helpful. many thanks

[Fuschia]

Though looking at it from a broader perspective, you can't really see it as Labour cutting while the libdems/tories argue against...!

[Loz]

If I was the cynical sort, I'd say Labour are cutting back hard to make the Tory's national cuts look worse than they need be. It's not really in their interest (nationally) to do this in the least pain-free way possible.

[languagelounger]

James

Given all these cuts to services that many regard as essential and the hardship that will be caused to a lot of people who are having a very tough time already, please could you offer your opinion on whether Southwark should be planning to expand its cemeteries?

There's no legal obligation for the Council to provide graveyards and they are extremely expensive to maintain. Most people already chose cremation so it's very difficult to understand why the majority should have to pay to subsidise inner city land being used up in this way? At the moment of course the Council is talking about digging up a public park for its new graves and - I think this is so - is the only Council in London that is even prepared to think about doing such a thing. Would be interested to hear your view - for or against. Thanks.

[Saila]

>"If I was the cynical sort, I'd say Labour are cutting back hard to make the Tory's national cuts look worse than they need be. It's not really in their interest (nationally) to do this in the least pain-free way possible."

or ... you could interpret this as Labour being damned if they do & damned if they don't?

[bawdy-nan]

There's an awful lot of picking through to be done. but in terms of what the differences to East Dulwich in particular might be am I right in thinking:

IN: Free school meals for all primary school children in all maintained schools (ie not dulwich hamlet if they choose to opt out)

cuts in subsidies to community nurseries (eg Gumboots) which may result in some closures,

withdrawing subsidy for after school and out of hours (ie holiday) clubs

withdrawing "extra" support for failing schools and those seeking improvement

cuts to shared services amongst schools (increased thretas because of the academies - eg dulwich hamlet -programme taking more money from shared services)

fewer community wardens (prob none in ED as far as I can make out)

libraries "under review", cessation of mobile and housebound library services;

reduction of days the noise nuisance teans available

cuts to support for disabled and older people (though hard to quantify exactly what the impact will be)

increase in charges for council provided services (social care) where payments are made,

increase in fees for parking, cemetries and licensing, no increase in council tax

obviously, there are wider and deeper implications in terms of cuts across services and how people will be affected

[bawdy-nan]

In respect of whether the council are cutting hard than they need to - James B, who provided this "information", is, as he acknowledges, political and it is of course what he'd like us to think ... (can't blame you for trying James!)

[James Barber]

Hi Fuschia,

You've lost me.

Even allowing for FSM's Labour are unnecessarily over cutting. For example with the new targets regime being significantly slimmer the Cehif Executive has agreed she will need ?600,000 less per year as less forms to fill in. Labour have not made that saving so something else has to be cut by ?600,000. Madness. They've been offered non frontline savings and refused them in preference to make frontline cuts. This is either very cynical politics or imcompetence.

Hi bawdy-nan,

Labour Councillor Nick Dolezal asked a question at council assembly. The answer was current unalloaced reserves are ?18.2M. That the inner london average such reserves are ?22.4M. If you read the budget for this year it has ?4M of unallocated contigency. So we're already at the inner London average. Labour plan on putting another ?27M into such reserves over the next 3 years. They chosen to do this. They don't need to. Why?

Do have a look at Supplemental Agenda no.3 as Labour are clearly not allowing for all sorts of incomes that would have avoided most of the painful frontline cuts.

As a Lib Dem group we reached the stage where the cut avoidance we were finding was getting awkward as we were running out of sensible frontline things to propose not cutting considering the current climate and all the revenue streams being ignored by the administration.

The clincher for me was Labour cutting hugely more than the local tories would.

So, we'll have no Community Wardens in the south of Southwark. They could have reorganised so they don't always hunt in packs of 2 or 3 wardens at a time. This would have largely kept the same number of patrols and geographic coverage. Much as the Met Police have been doing.

So far no suggestion that state primary schools that become academies wont be included in the FSM's ie. Dulwich Hamlets.

I've been undertaking some research on libraries - proving hard to get council officers engaged on this. It appears no cuts necessary to any library service including mobile and housebound just some careful reorganising a la Hillingdon undertook in 2008. They increased number if libraries, hours of opening and +84% users while spending 20% less.

Whereas this makes the 9th year council officers have privately sugested closing 2-4 smaller libraries. Sadly its appears the Labour cabinet member isn't challenging this...yet.

Hi languagelunger,

Your right no legal obligation to provide cemeteries but if people have a requirement for burial they usually get charged a multiple if from out of borough. I've some enquiries out and thoughts of how to progress cemeteries without digging up neighbouring recreational grounds. More next week hopefully.

[bawdy-nan]

hi James - I will have a proper look when I've recovered from data fatigue...

re the hamlet and fsm - it says pretty clearly that the fsm extension will be to all children in *maintained* schools which I took to mean schools under the southwark umbrella - (academy status for the hamlet would mean they're out of that umbrella surely - so would cost hamlet parents 500 pounds a year more than if they went to another primary in southwark ...???? (do correct if that's wrong)

[Fuschia]

James, what I meant was, while I agree with you that if Labour are adding to reserves then they must be making larger cuts than are necessary, it can't really be said these are Labour cuts opposed by libdems/tories given the political trajectory of the current government.

[Bumpkin]

Will Goose Green school still get the funding for the improvements to classrooms and the new canteen that they were predicting to have in place for September this year?

[TopTree]

Council workers? should have voted for their pay to be reduced and nobody would need to be sacked.

[bawdy-nan]

top tree - that's clearly absurd - have a look at the figures

[Pugwash]

As a local authority worker - we have been informed that our pay will be frozen - would rather have a job than increased pay. My colleagues and I work in health and social care, and it will be upto us to tell people that they will not get the level of services they are used to, and we as front line staff already get verbal abuse from some people who think they/their relative deserves more. On colleague talks in terms of cakes - you have one party cake the more people that want cake - the smaller the slice, you either have a small slice, pay alot extra for another cake, or have no cake at all.

[EDmummy]

James, did you say a cut to afterschool clubs? So, women in particular are being forced into work but won't be able work a full day because there will be no afterschool care provision. Gonna be fun!!

[bawdy-nan]

I think the idea is that private providers take up the slack (at increased cost). this is at the same time as working tax credit childcare subsidy is reduced, many families on lower incomes are excluded from tax credits altogether (so will have no subsidy for childcare as those very costs increase), and women are required to work. Really hard to see how it adds up to make work pay. I was so grateful to tax credits when my children were very small. Without the subsidy to childcare I would have found keeping working a real struggle and would have been out of tbd jobs market for 7 years.

[Ridgley]

Marmora Man wrote

-----------------

Cuts to lollipop ladies and mobile libraries (tho' personally I'd cut fixed libraries and keep the mobiles) don't affect people's incomes. Equally, poverty, of itself, does not breed criminals - to say it does is to tarnish the majority of law abiding but poor in this country and city. It is condescending in the extreme.

First of all MM I am not saying all but you cannot say that there is not some sort of link and for condescending that rich coming form you.

[Loz]

Ridgley Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Cuts and poverty are linked; don?t be surprised if

> crime will increase because of this and discord in

> communities.

Depends what you mean. Since the definition of 'poverty' seems to be 60% of median income, no amount of services a council provides will affect the poverty statistics one iota. But that's the problem with aligning poverty to other people's incomes. You create a problem that, practically, can never be solved.

[Sheepdog]

Presumably the reserve/contincency is up so that Labour can inflict misery with cuts now, blaming the goverment, then fund some splurge when elections next come along in a few years time. Typical Labour dishonesty.

[SeanMacGabhann]

This whole idea tha Labour councils are dishonest with their cuts is surely a sham. I'm not saying they are morally incapable of it but surely any council inflicting cuts is going to be judged just as harshly by the electorate

It would be a folly of a gamble to take

[Loz]

I'm still a bit astounded that they persevered with the 'feed rich and middle class kids' agenda. That's a lot of money that could have been put to far better use.